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A new report, published by Arts for Health (Manchester Metropolitan University) on Thursday 12 February 2015, reveals that engaging with the arts and culture generally has a positive long-term effect on health and wellbeing.

At the Arts Council, when they talk about the value of arts and culture to society, they always start with its intrinsic value: how arts and culture can illuminate our inner lives and enrich our emotional world. This is what they cherish.
They also understand that arts and culture has a wider, more measurable impact on our economy, health and wellbeing, society and education. It’s important we also recognize this impact to help people think of our arts and culture for what they are: a strategic national resource.
The value of arts and culture to people and society – an evidence review, gathers information that shows where the impact of their work is felt, whilst also identifying any gaps to help shape future research commissions.

The corporation is at a crossroads. The businesses that we have grown up with and the business models that underpin them face deep challenges. They are being reconstructed, from within and without, by pervasive technology. Their values, and the values associated with work and the workplace, are increasingly being questioned. Their model of resource use, of “use it and throw it out,” is increasingly running up against constraints of supply costs. New ways of designing and managing businesses, and new business models, are inevitable.
Changes in values are always one of the biggest sources of social transformation. One of the most significant changes in values at present is the shift towards wellbeing, at both a personal and public policy level.

This guide introduces the 2010 Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index of Bhutan. It explains the origins of the concept of GNH, its grounding in Bhutanese culture and history, and describes how the concept is being operationalized in the form of the GNH Index in some novel and innovative ways. Any discussion of the GNH in Bhutan must begin from the understanding that it is distinct from the western literature on ‘happiness’ in two ways. First it is multidimensional –not focused only on subjective well-being to the exclusion of other dimensions – and second, it internalizes other regarding motivations. While multidimensional measures of the quality of life and well-being are increasingly discussed, Bhutan is innovative in constructing a multidimensional measure which is itself relevant for policy and is also directly associated with a linked set of policy and programme screening tools. This guide presents the GNH Index which provides an overview of national GNH across 9 domains, comprising of 33 clustered indicators, each one of which is composed of several variables. When unpacked, the 33 clustered indicators have 124 variables.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Wellbeing Economics is made up of politicians from all major political parties. It was set up to:
• Provide a forum for discussion of wellbeing issues and public policy in Parliament;
• promote enhancement of wellbeing as an important government goal;
• encourage the adoption of wellbeing indicators as complimentary measures of progress to GDP;
• and promote policies designed to enhance wellbeing.
The group’s officers are David Lammy MP (Chair), Baroness Claire Tyler (Vice-chair), Dr Julian Huppert MP (Vice-chair), Helen Goodman MP (Treasurer) and Caroline Lucas MP (Secretary). The New Economics Foundation (NEF) acts as secretariat for the group.
This report is the result of a year-long inquiry by the cross-party group of MPs exploring how wellbeing evidence can be translated into policy in four diverse areas: labour markets, planning and transport, mindfulness in health and education, and arts and culture. It calls for more focus on stable employment as opposed to economic growth, and stresses that in tough economic times it is all the more vital that we remain focussed on building a high wellbeing recovery.

Measuring what matters is one of the six Principles of the Happy Museum Project. We suggest that counting visitor numbers tells us nothing about the quality of their experience or our contribution to their wellbeing.
Museums are adept at storytelling, evaluation reports which speak of transformational experiences for individuals as a result of museum activity are legion. Qualitative research has been used by museums as effective advocacy, often influencing the hearts and minds of decision makers at local level. However, we think that quantitative evidence that robustly uncovers cause and effect is more likely to influence policy makers.
So with funding support from Arts Council England we asked Daniel Fujiwara from the London School of Economics to measure and value people’s happiness as a result of visiting or participating in museum activity. This paper is one of a handful of studies that have applied robust quantitative methods on large national datasets to give us a better understanding of the impact of culture on people’s lives.
By finding that the individual wellbeing value of museums is over £3,000 a year, the report makes a strong case for investing in museums. It also identifies what makes people more likely to visit museums, giving some direction into where that investment might be best placed. It sits alongside our qualitative research which digs into how museums make a difference.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) commissioned researchers from the London School of Economics (LSE) to undertake analysis of Understanding Society data to develop the evidence base on the wellbeing impacts of cultural engagement and sport participation. This work gives us new evidence of the link between our policies and the social impacts of engagement in both sport and culture.

This document is aimed at commissioners and providers of culture and leisure services in England. It is designed to help them to:
- Understand and engage more effectively and collaboratively with each other and the health and wellbeing agenda;
- Introduce the structures, frameworks and outcomes relating to public health;
- Contribute to health and wellbeing in their locality by engaging with the right partnerships and strategic commissioning processes and;
- More convincingly demonstrate the contribution the sector can make.
The document is also intended to:
- Highlight to public health commissioners how culture and leisure can help to tackle unhealthy lifestyles, address the social determinants of health, offer cost effective approaches, bring creative solutions and engage communities, families and individuals in managing their wellbeing.

Resilience is a term increasingly used in reference to an ability to withstand stress and serious challenge. It is commonly discussed in relation to how best to prepare for major upheavals and challenges such as extreme weather, terrorism or other disruptions to day-to-day life.
However, for resilience to have relevance to public health it must provide a framework which enables individuals and communities to withstand challenges such as poverty, inequality, worklessness and other factors that endanger health and wellbeing.
This report provides supporting information to the accompanying Concepts Series 12 Briefing Paper, Resilience for public health; supporting transformation in people and communities, exploring the concept of resilience and its application within the field of public health.
The exploration took the form of a review of literature looking at existing research around what promotes resilient outcomes for individuals and communities.
The theme of transformation comes through strongly; of individuals and communities being able to adapt in the face of change. For people to flourish in the face of change, support is needed from their communities and those who make decisions about their communities.
The report investigates ways in which the spheres of culture, the economy, governance and infrastructure can support the transformational capacity of individuals and communities.

This report gives an overview of the arts and health field, with particular reference to the UK and New Zealand. It provides a review of the evidence for the benefits of the arts to health, as well as the policy context of commissioning arts and health initiatives. It also highlights the potential role arts can play within professional education contexts (for example within medical training) as well as within therapy, healthcare and community settings. It includes case studies and subjective reflections on how the arts can interact with health and wellbeing, and also suggests ways forward for development of the arts in support of culture, health and wellbeing.

Conventional development thinking emphasises economic growth over human wellbeing and ignores care as a public good that sustains and reproduces society and on which markets depend for their functioning. Our alternative is an economic system that reflects and places a value on equitable relations between women and men. We challenge commonly held assumptions about how the economy works – assumptions that in this time of global crisis risk bringing greater misery and impoverishment for those who can least protect themselves from collapsing markets. We propose development policies and programmes that can immediately start to address the interconnected concerns of women as producers, employees and carers with positive effect for individual, family and social wellbeing. In addition, philanthropic foundations – with their track record of facilitating new an challenging ideas – can facilitate the world’s most important debate about shaping an economy for people rather than people for the economy.

The Workplace Wellbeing Charter is a statement about the way in which you run your business and support your workforce, demonstrated by adherence to a set of standards. To achieve the Charter you will be asked to demonstrate your commitment and support by taking action to implement any changes which may be necessary in your organisation.
The standards contained within this charter are not exhaustive and are intended to set a minimum standard on which your organization can build. They are a guide to what success can look like and a way of benchmarking that success against other.
Charter aims and objectives:
- Introduce clear, easy to use well-being standards.
- Improve well-being and reduce absenteeism.
- Provide tools to measure and evaluate progress.
- Identify and share good practice and real-life examples.
- Show that workplace health and well-being is a worthwhile investment.

This review focuses on the insights to be gleaned about the nature and causes of wellbeing from research in social anthropology. It stresses that the whole notion of “wellbeing” is not common and absolute, shared by all communities and at all periods of history. Indeed, in the Western word, it is a relatively recent concept. There is a need to take a strongly cross-cultural perspective in order to understand local variants of wellbeing in their proper context. Three common, near universal, themes do emerge, however: material security; health status; and the nature of stresses and adversity such as external threats or illness. The role of religion is explored as a mediator of wellbeing, as are the trend towards depressive symptoms and the relevance to wellbeing of migration and problems of socio-cultural adaptation.